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Optimove acquires Graphyte: realtime symmetric and personalised journeys

By - 13 July 2022

Following the news that real-time, cloud-based personalisation platform Graphyte has been acquired by Optimove, G3 caught up with two of the main protagonists involved in negotiations to discuss the rationale behind the move.

Could you tell us more about Graphyte and the journey the company has been on since being co-founded by yourself in 2018?

Rob Davis, Co-Founder & CTO: We started Graphyte because of a need to solve a problem we had faced from our many years working in the betting and gaming industry – how to offer the customer something truly unique and personalised in a commoditised marketplace.

The last four years have validated our thesis that the market was ready for change and it has been a fun and challenging time building out a suite of products that can really make a difference to operators.

How did the deal come about? What were the major discussion points during negotiations?

Rob: As is often the way, the conversation started through a shared customer and integration and quickly evolved into exploring the opportunity to form a deeper partnership.

Discussions were immediately positive and focussed on making sure the product and marketing fit was right and most importantly that the companies’ cultures were well suited to each other.

We were really impressed by the management team at Optimove and how they retained a really energetic and passionate focus.

What synergies do Optimove’s and Graphyte’s respective platforms share?

Pini Yakuel, CEO & Founder of Optimove: Optimove and Graphyte are both powered by customer data. As a result, the synergies are vast. Firstly, Optimove’s robust unified customer data will enhance Graphyte’s recommendation models making them more powerful than ever.

Secondly, results from Graphyte’s models and engagement will enrich unified customer profiles in Optimove, providing marketers with more robust segmentation and orchestration capabilities.

Finally, by leveraging Graphyte’s content personalisation across Optimove’s email, mobile, and web marketing channels will provide end-customers with symmetric experiences across all touchpoints.

Rob, was being acquired always part of the long term plan for the business?

Rob: We certainly weren’t actively pursuing a sale as we continued our own internal ambitious growth plans however we had always had in mind the potential for an acquisition at some point in the future. The key thing for us was finding the right home to continue the growth of the company and we believe we have found it in Optimove.

How does the acquisition of Graphyte fit into Optimove’s overarching investment strategy?

Pini: It was always our promise to our clients to always be on a quest to expand our offering, to continue to evolve and provide them with even more capabilities and freedom to bring their marketing vision to life without ever needing to leave the Optimove platform.

That’s exactly what we’re doing. If we can develop that next-step capability in-house – we will invest in that. If it means going out and acquiring a first-in-class product, we’ll do that as well, as evident from the two acquisitions already under our belt in 2022.

How will Graphyte’s personalisation platform now be used? Will it form part of a bigger, beefier player engagement platform offering or continue as its own entity within Optimove’s ecosystem of services?

Pini: Our objective is to provide not only the best experience to customers but also to our own users. With this in mind, we are exploring all opportunities and avenues to bring the best platform offering to market.

What does the deal mean for Graphyte’s status and reputation in the iGaming space?

Rob: We are proud that Optimove has recognised Graphyte’s successes to date and believes in our plans to transform the industry for the better.

Our shared heritage in iGaming uniquely positions us to support our customers across the widest range of personalisation and communication needs and we believe that we form a great partnership in the sector moving forwards.

Earlier this year Optimove acquired mobile marketing platform, Kumulos. What does the combination of Graphyte and Kumulos mean for Optimove? Should we anticipate further investments in CRM capabilities this calendar year?

Pini: The new capabilities we’ve added with the Graphyte and Kumulos acquisitions mean that, for the first time, marketers can deeply personalise every customer touchpoint, utilising our market-leading capability of transforming customer data into customer-led journeys at scale.

Optimove’s Customer Data Platform unifies all customer data from all sources to create a comprehensive single customer view. Graphyte adds real-time content recommendations across any channel and touchpoint.

Kumulos bolstered Optimove’s journey orchestration engine, adding native mobile capabilities to allow brands to seamlessly orchestrate multichannel marketing journeys across the web, email, and mobile channels. The result is a one-stop, full-service multichannel marketing hub built for personalisation at scale.

While we cannot publicly comment on whether new M&A activity will take place this year or on items on our roadmap for internal development, we can say that we are committed to continue to develop and rollout game changing CRM Marketing capabilities.

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